What a difference...

a pair of young women wielding various "tools of destruction" can make in a morning😄

You may recall my sad lament regarding how vigorously the fuchsia beside the tiny little nature pool had grown.  Like the rest of the garden it had become totally overgrown over the last 18 months or so, but I have to admit that it wasn't an easy shrub to keep under control at the best of times.  So Adrian and I asked Beverly and Lyndi if they could help us do something with it.  They are both quite keen on a spot of demolition and were kind enough to come over last weekend to sort it out ~ and all we had to do was feed and water the pair of 'em😉

Ta-daa!  What a huge difference removing it has made!  There is obviously a lot of work yet to be done, but we won't be tackling it until next year as we are still plugging away at the rest of the garden.  I expect we will end up deconstructing the area and starting again, certainly in the vicinity of the pool at any rate.  I am considering taking out the plants on the right-hand side and extending the size of the pool to make a tiny marshy area.

I'm trying to rein-in my butterfly mind, though, as it's going to be a number of months before we can make a start on this new project!  I was thinking about it in the shower the other day and obviously not concentrating on what I was picking up ~ I ended up washing with my "detoxifying" seaweed shampoo instead of  the "soothing and nourishing" coconut body wash😳

The deconstruction/reconstruction in the old fruit cage area is still progressing albeit a tad slowly this week as the weather is rather mixed.  Whilst Adrian was working on the bed at the front I got the two holly bushes dug out from the one at the back, and moved them to fill the gap in the hedge border.

Good news, by the way, on the hedge border front.  Our neighbours have started a massive clearing out exercise of their thorny/prickly shrubs, so hopefully I won't have to contend with them encroaching into our garden in the future 😊 

As well as the holly bushes I also dug out the two ferns that were in the same bed, along with two from the border that runs across the garden in front of the dining room.  Before I realised just how hard it would be to transplant, I had thought about moving the fuchsia into this bed.  Now that our neighbours are having this clear out in their garden and I don't have to try to "fight back" with my own big shrubs, I felt it would be much better to make this into a fern bed instead.  There really are four ferns in the bed, it's just that two are very small ~ probably because they were being rather smothered by weeds!  I have two more in the border alongside the path that runs from the front gate, and I'll hopefully get them moved into the bed soon.

I can't quite believe how long it took me to move these six plants ~ I was out there beavering away for about three bloody hours!  The couple that had been in the bed with the holly bushes were relatively easy to dig out, but it was hard going getting the other two out of that overgrown border 😒

And to finish off, here's a cute scene in the central raised bed in the back patio garden: a little slice of life imitating art 👏

Little words of wisdom

 

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)   

Stacking up

After a few hours working in the garden I really don't feel up to doing anything that could possibly turn out to be even a teensy wee bit strenuous ~ so as you can imagine my decidedly patchy housework routine has gone completely out the window yet again 😄

That's not to say, though, that I've just been vegetating in front of the TV of an evening 😉 I have in fact been plugging away at the Christmas gift blanket I started back in August.  I estimate that I'm about two-thirds of the way through the body of the blanket but I confess that the making of it does seem to be crawling along somewhat *sigh*  It's also not as wide as the bonus blanket, and I don't really know why.  I can only surmise that I made a longer starting chain for the BB and/or used a slightly larger hook perhaps?  This is, of course, a good lesson on why I should keep proper records of the things I make for future reference!  To bring it up more to the dimensions of the BB, I guess I'll just have to make a wider border.

It is a very pretty blanket, though, and I am pleased with how the colour combination has turned out, but I rather think it will be quite some time before I tackle another interlocking block stitch pattern 😄

To make matters worse, my butterfly mind keeps flitting over to the latest blanket Beverly has asked me to make: a baby blanket for her friend.  Said baby is due in February, I believe, so provided I get a wiggle on with the Christmas gift blanket I should be able to leave myself enough time to make this one.

pattern from Dada's Place

This is the pattern that Beverly has chosen, the Rainbow Ruffle Blanket by Dada's Place.  Dragana has lots of lovely, free, patterns on her blog as well as many more in her shop.  I came across this particular pattern quite some time ago and it's been sitting in my stash of patterns waiting to be made since then.

Beverly decided to keep the colour palette very simple and neutral rather than the rainbow colours used in the pattern, and also to have the blanket made a little larger.  I got the yarn from my usual go-to supplier, Wool Warehouse.  It's King Cole Cottonsoft DK which, as the name suggests, is a 100% cotton yarn and comes in 100g balls.  The main body of the blanket will be in the lovely pale green shade, Sage, with the ruffles in Oyster.  I'm not very good at estimating how much yarn I'm going to need if I alter the size of a project from what is stated in the pattern ~ hence all that leftover yarn from Olive's blanket that I still haven't used up, despite making the bonus blanket 😲  At least anything that may be leftover from this ruffle blanket can be put to good use for making more dishcloths as and when I need them😉

So as you can see, the projects are starting to stack up a tad.....goodness knows when I'll get the guest bedroom blanket finished!  

Whilst I was very good and didn't let myself be tempted to add to my decidedly not-insubstantial yarn stash, I did succumb to the allure of a tapestry kit that I'd had in my WW wish list for a while.  After all, how could I be expected to resist the rather pleasing 15% discount 😏   

I had been planning to repot the houseplants in the living room on the days I can't get out in the garden, but I guess I won't now be disturbing my schlumbergera any time soon!  It seemed to just suddenly be full of buds although I should, of course, have been expecting them to be putting in an appearance now that we're into October.  The flowers are a very pretty pale pink, and really add a cheerful note to the long, dark, days of autumn and winter.  Oh well, Miss Schlumbergera will just have to wait until she's finished blooming for her repotting ~ I've still got plenty of her companions to keep me occupied in the meantime 😊 

Deconstruction

Adrian was also busy last week, beavering away in what was the old fruit cage area to turn it into both a more manageable space and another little place for seating.

The beds are now mostly emptied out, and the few remaining plants and shrubs in the bed to right will be removed soon.  The two hollies are ear-marked to fill the gap in the side hedge border on the other side of the garden.  There are also a couple of ferns and an alchemilla mollis in the bed, which may go over in the raised bed on the far side of the garden at the house-end of that border.  I had thought that I might move the fuchsia, which is currently helping to smother the nature pool, over to that bed but quite frankly it grows so horribly vigorously that I think the best thing will be to just remove it altogether!  Instead I am considering filling the raised bed with a variety of ferns.  As well as the two in the bed above there is another in the path border that will have to be moved, along with at least one in another border that could be moved to the raised bed as well.  Alas, sadly for my enjoyment quota although not for my purse of course, methinks there will be no necessity to indulge in a nice little spot of online plant shopping 😄   

Anyhoo, enough talk of plant shopping and back to the job in hand.  Although Adrian had already dug out a lot of the soil from the centre bed, as he started to dismantle it he realised that he would have to dig out even more to come down to ground level!  Rather than trundle it round to the new soil mountain in the back garden, he decided to just bag it up for now and use it first in due course.

He also suggested that whilst we were repurposing the boards from the centre bed to make the right-hand bed taller, why not just plough ahead and buy in some additional boards to increase the height of both the beds?  As you can imagine, I thought it was a very good idea.  Not only would it make weeding said beds more comfortable, it should also ensure that we will be able to get rid of the soil mountain and hopefully at least some of the not-completely-composted-compost that we had to empty out of the bins earlier in the year.  Two birds with one stone 😉 

We had some oddments of weed membrane leftover and Adrian made good use of them to cover over the bare soil where the centre bed had been.  As they were odds and ends he had to do a fair bit of overlapping but at least it's put them to good use.  For now, he's simply pulled over the stone chippings that had been pushed to one side whilst the bed was being dismantled.  Once the other two beds have been made higher and filled with soil, he will then spread out a layer of new stone chippings which will finish off what we had left over from the earlier Big Job.  Speaking of which, it's now become apparent that we will need at least two more bags of the bloody things delivered at some point 😒 

By the weekend we were both pretty knackered to be honest so we didn't do anything out in the garden on Saturday, plus it rained in the afternoon.  As it was dry on Sunday morning, though, we decided to do a job that we've talking about doing for ages: give the lawn a jolly good raking over.  It's not much of a lawn, to be fair, but we just haven't had the time nor inclination to improve it.   

In all honesty, although we did rake up a good bit of moss, the "after" photo doesn't look all that much different to the "before" one!  OMG, it was bloody hard work too!  So guess what Adrian spent the afternoon doing whilst we both bemoaned our aching backs and shoulders.....yup, you guessed it, comparing the merits of various electric lawn scarifier/rake machines 😉

Little words of wisdom

 

Time to relax?

image from Clipart Library

Well, not exactly "relax" perhaps ~ we all know there's no rest for the wicked, after all 😉

As you may recall, I was working my way round the side and front wall hedge borders on the ornamental side of the front garden last week, and in my last "show-and-tell" post I had about half of the front wall section left to tackle.  This was the area I was dreading the most to be honest, as I could see just how full of crud it was *sigh*

There was the usual mix of weeds, including the devil dandelions of course, and dead bluebell stems, but by far the worst were the weeds that are known in our house as "those bloody horrible sticky weeds" 😏 I believe they are actually called Cleavers and the RHS describe them as "wildflowers" ~ which I suppose all weeds are, to be fair 😄 I've no idea how the stuff got into the garden in the first place, and it seems to be mostly confined to this small section of this particular border.  Of course, like the premature ejaculating weed in the asparagus bed, by the time I got to removing the cleavers they had dried out and the seeds were dropping all over the place!  I scooped up as much as I could, and pulled off the ones that had attached themselves to my gloves and clothes, but no doubt they will be back in force again in the spring 😒 

It took me all morning but I was determined to get the job finished ~ and finish I did 😌

I'm so pleased to get these two borders weeded and tidied up before winter ~ hopefully it will be easier to keep on top of it next year.  Of course now the inner border looks even worse, so I'm hoping for the best but expecting the worst with regards to actually getting round to sorting it out this year 😏

Something else that cheered me up last week was being able to harvest some of those very unpromising-looking French beans.  There was barely enough for one person, let alone the two of us, but I'm amazed that we've been able to pick any beans at all to be honest!  I haven't pulled any of the carrots yet and the celery is still doing it's thing, but who knows, perhaps there'll be a small harvest from them too 😊

Greenhouse massacre!

I mentioned a few weeks back that whilst we were dismantling the fruit cages, I decided to save the standard redcurrant and move it round to the kitchen courtyard.  As usual I didn't take a photo at the time but here it is in it's new home.  Mind you, I don't think it was too happy to be uprooted and plonked in a pot, albeit a large one, because soon after I took said photo it dropped all its leaves 😒 I'm hoping it's only a temporary sulk and that it will perk up again next spring!

Coming back to more recent garden tasks, not only was I working my way round the hedge border in the ornamental front garden, I also had to be ruthless in the greenhouse last week too 😦  

Before we went south, the tomatoes were finally starting to fruit but we'd had only a handful actually ripen.

The sweet peppers were even further behind!  The cucumbers, to be fair though, have been pretty productive.

So it was all pretty "jungly" in there before we went away, but when we got back most of the leaves of the Orangeto tomatoes were yellow, wilting, and spotty.  The Summerlast leaves, though, were perfectly fine!  I decided drastic measures were called for so I stripped off all the manky foliage leaving some very sorry-looking tomato plants in my wake 😏 I also took off a fair few of the leaves from the Summerlast plants in the hope that the fruits would have more access to the light to help them ripen. 

By last week the cucumbers were just about finished but I've been happy with the harvest from the two plants.  As for the sweet peppers, well I don't know if I will attempt to grow them again ~ not from plug plants anyway, as by the time they are despatched I just seem to run out of growing time.  The same is true of the tomatoes, to be honest, so I think that next year I may gird me loins and try from seed so that I can sow earlier in the season.

Nothing much was happening with the tomatoes by last week either, so I decided to be even more ruthless!  I stripped the leaves totally from the Summerlast plants; it remains to be seen whether the fruit will ripen any further.

As for the Orangeto, I felt there wasn't any point in keeping the fruit on the plants so I stripped them totally 😏  There were a lot of fruits on the plants, as well as more flowers, but I kept only the larger ones.  They are now in a tub on the kitchen worktop and are finally starting to ripen.  I will probably pick the Summerlast fruits soon and bring them indoors too, as it won't be long before I need space in the greenhouse for the plants I want to try to overwinter again this year! 

Peace...

www.allposters.co.uk

Father, Mother, God,

Thank you for your presence during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence during the bright and sunny days.

For then we can share that which we have with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence during the Holy Days.

For then we are able to celebrate you and our families and our friends

For those who have no voice, we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy, we ask you to pour your love out in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain, we ask you to bathe them in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed, we ask you to shower upon them the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most.....PEACE.

Maya Angelou

(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)   

Another beautiful day!

Miss Bluebell was back in one of her favourite spots again yesterday, still hoping that the birds wouldn't notice her!  After a while she moved further along the border and relaxed in the sunshine.  Not so much of that today, unfortunately, but at least I was able to make a good start on the front wall border yesterday whilst it was still warm and sunny.

Even piling up all my gardening stuff in front of the border couldn't disguise the mess it was in!

Like the side border, we made this one in three sections to follow the slope of the garden.  It's been such a long time since I did anything in the border that I couldn't remember what, if anything, I'd planted in there apart from the shrubs😏

It was full of dead bluebell stems, the dreaded dandelions, and various other weeds.  

It took me all morning to clear it out but the end result was very satisfying.  Once I'd pulled out all the weeds (and dug up as much of the dandelion roots that I could) I could see that actually there wasn't much of anything planted apart from the shrubs 😄 Hopefully I'll be able to find a home along here for some of the smaller plants, at least, that will have to be dug out of the path border in due course. 

I got around half of the work done yesterday, leaving this section to be tackled for another day.  Something to look forward to, eh 😉

This is the back view of the humungous fuchsia that's currently crowding out the tiny nature pool over in the kitchen garden.  The girls are hopefully coming over next weekend to help us tackle it!

And to finish off, I thought I'd show you what's happening in the wooden tubs.  The three roses have settled down very nicely; they've all put out some new growth and two of them have also had some blooms.

 Considering how badly I've neglected them the sweet peas are, rather amazingly, still flowering 😳 I really do want to get the two dwarf buddleja I recently bought planted in the tubs, so sadly they will have to be pulled out soon.  I've got one or two other jobs I want to get done first, though, so I can enjoy their pretty flowers for a little while longer at least 😊

A beautiful day

It was surprisingly warm in the front garden yesterday, which made the task of finishing off the side hedge border much more pleasant than it might otherwise have been 😉  I apologise in advance, by the way, that these photos I have taken with my phone camera are really rather crappy!

I started on the border last week, with the section to the left of this photo which is relatively short.  I thought that this next section, which is much longer, would take more time to work through but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself moving along at a good pace.  Mind you if I hadn't had to cut back the prickly stuff growing over the wall from next door, I would have got through the whole bloody border much more quickly than I ultimately did 😒

I had feared that because it's been so neglected I might have lost some of the new shrubs I planted, but thankfully so far only one hasn't made it ~ hence the gap.  I have a couple of holly bushes that I want to move, so I'm going to put them here.

All three of the border sections have creeping jenny (lysimachia nummularia) plants at the back, and this middle area has fox and cubs (pilosella aurantiaca) along the front.  The latter grows very vigorously and needs a firm hand to keep it in check!  It's a lovely plant, though, with clusters of cheerful orange flowers rising up from the clumps of leaves.  I gave it a severe trim to stop it from escaping into the path and beyond!  Creeping jenny is another plant that is usually pretty vigorous and although it is in the other two sections of the border, it's much less so here in the middle. 

The third section is shorter than the middle, but a little longer than the first.  The weeding didn't take long at all here but I did have to spend some time trimming back the three shrubs in the centre to give them all a little more breathing space.  

This section has sweet woodruff (galium odoratum), which has pretty little white flowers, along the front.  It was looking a tad untidy so I have given it a bit of a haircut!  I had to thin out quite a lot of the creeping jenny along the back, too.  

The escallonia in the corner marks both the end of the side border and the start of the front wall border.  I just had a somewhat cursory tidy up here as it's a tad difficult to get to very easily, so I'm happy to leave a tiny area to go a little "wild" 😉

And here's another crappy (!) photo of the whole border.  At least I can see where I've been 😊

I believe the front edging in the first section, by the way, may be London Pride (saxifraga x urbium).  There was a lot of it already in the garden when we bought the house, and I've gradually been moving it to different places.  This section was choked up with buttercups and a few of the London Pride plants just couldn't compete, so I'll be moving some more from the path border at some point to fill in the gaps.

I'm hoping that the weather tomorrow stays true to the forecast, which at the moment is predicting another sunny day, so that I can at least make a good start on the rest of the front wall border.

And to round off this post, here's Miss Bluebell trying to be inconspicuous whilst she watches the birds 😄 (I took the photo through the dining room window, so at least I have a bit of an excuse for the poor quality of this one!)